Brawler's Guild Preview
Patch 5.1 adds a new activity, the Brawler's Guild. It is located in an instanced area in Stormwind or Orgrimmar. Upon entering the area you can see the arena where the current fight is taking place if there is one, along with any other spectators, the Brawler's Guild NPCs to queue from, and the Quartermaster.

Currently only one player can fight at a time, so you must queue for battle with one of the NPCs. When it is your turn, you enter the ring and fight a somewhat difficult mob. Each win gives you reputation to raise your ranking. There are a total of eight ranks to progress through, with many wins needed to go up through each rank.

Each time you win a fight, you are rewarded with a Brawler's Purse or Bulging Brawler's Purse, which contains some gold and vendor trash, depending on your ranking and luck. Currently the rewards sold by the Quartermaster don't require ranking to purchase. This may change in the future, or more rewards could be added. See the video below for the first fight you will take part in!

Patch 5.1: Misc Jaina Audio
A few more bits of audio for Jaina were added in the latest Patch 5.1 build.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Patch 5.1 Class ChangesThe problem with hunters are their cooldowns, remove stampede or change it, make the duration longer but damage less. The changes made to Beast Within make it so that hunter pets are more easily controlled. So when a hunter pops Stampede now, if you use some form of control to keep those pets from going wild on yourself or a partner then you will be able to protect your team. On top of this as well is the change to Lynx Rush, which will lower potential burst damage.

and the change with warriors is to not let them use every CD at once, and remove gag order on pummel which is the most braindead mechanic ever, faking a interrupt, joke get silenced anyways..
We have another update planned for the Patch 5.1 PTR Patch Notes blog soon and recommend that you keep an eye on this to see what else is coming for patch 5.1 as there are some changes for warriors.

How about after all of these nerfs we get some buffs to sustained Damage? Or is it going to take 4 more years until hunters are viable in arena?
I don't know about you, but right now I think that hunters are quite viable in arena >.> Also, I believe that hunters were doing quite well last season in compositions such as PHD and Junglecleave… also, while people did not like the team composition, triple DPS also did quite well in which hunters were involved.

On to the sustained damage over burst though. The change to Lynx rush will lower burst and also increase the sustained damage of hunters as it will be apply DoT effect rather than a direct damage attack. So you can take Blink Strike for Direct damage and Lynx Rush for sustained, depending on your play style. This as well as the ability to move while casting certain shots helps with increasing sustained damage. Remember that the patch notes are not final, more is still to come as I have already said.

This change means nothing to me as I can't save my healer.
Well, I see you are specced into Chillblains as a Frost DK, Howling Blast will slow the movement of the pets to give your healer or yourself some time to get distance. Also, what class is your healer and what about your other partners?
A priest can Psychic Scream or use Void Tendrils. Druids can Mass Entanglement and Displacer Beast to get away. Shamans can Earthgrab Totem and Astral Shift. A paladin can Repentance, Hammer of Justice then use their first tier talent to get away and if in severe trouble they can bubble too. A monk can use their first tier talents to get some distance as well as using Fortifying Brew, Expel Harm and even grapple the hunter weapon to mitigate damage.

There are loads of ways to get away and protect yourself or your partners, especially if the pets are not immune to crowd control. The things that I have listed are also only some of what can be done, if you also include a third team member into the equation the possibilities for control increase even further. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Ghost Speed and Flight Path Speed Increase
If you are referring to the guild perk Ride Like the Wind, we are aware of a number flight paths that restrict them from being affected by the perk. This issue only affects a very small number of flight paths and was because of how they were made and interact with certain quests (all fairly technical stuff).

All other flight paths should be functioning correctly with Ride Like the Wind, and we can request that specific flight points be double checked when reported.

Quick and the Dead at 100% was too fast sometimes. However, Quick and the Dead at 10% is Way Too Slow. Could we compromise and make it 40%?
Your concerns have been noted. I'll try to bring them up at the next meeting with our developers. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

LFR Loot SystemAnyone else get royally shafted like this?
The game now recognizes not only your class, but your spec. Once upon a time (not very long ago), there was every chance that you would go through a raid, and not only would no items drop that were useful for your class, there was a very good chance that if they did, they wouldn't be useful for your spec. Or if an item dropped that you wanted and was particularly sought after, there was a chance that an unscrupulous raid leader would simply take it for themselves. It was entirely possible to go raid lockout after raid lockout in this way.

The new loot system isn't perfect but it does help address those issues. It's not designed to deliver into your hands shiny new items perfect for exactly how you've tuned your character to function though. There's always an element of randomness to how loot drops, and that's by design. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Purpose of LFRThe point of LFR is to allow players that don't otherwise have the means to raid to see the content.
Correct! It's become more than that since then, but we realized that we were investing a lot of effort in content that only a few very dedicated players would see. While we have always believed that raiding is important, we also wanted to provide a way for more players to see some of the most exciting content we were working on, and Raid Finder was the result of that effort. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

PvP Blog PostAnd no, this isn't "dumbing it down" or "making it too easy" - the 2200 rating requirement was implemented when there was far more activity (read: MORE INFLATION) and the goal has become far more difficult to reach RELATIVE TO ACTIVITY.
I think you'll be interested in what we have to say in an upcoming blog on the subject of PvP. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Pet BattlesPossible source for the Pandaren elemental spirits? I hope we get to collect all four.
Choice of one out of 4 on quest complete, then you can farm rest from unlocked dailys. Each spirit drops it’s own pet in bag. Sidenote, this quest only unlocks after you finish the last quest on the main pet battle quest line. The main quest chain currently ends with Aki the Grand Master in Pandaria, right?
Yup!

Is there a way the Pet battle quest chain could be in all of our character's quest logs instead of just the one? Thanks!
Quests are already account wide, just separate for Alliance and Horde.

So,Family specific Flawless-Battlestones down from same family wild pets? and BoP?
Low drop from same family wild pets, high drop from daily quest bags, all bop. Very rare non-specific is unbound, from wild pets.

I installed an addon to see rarity in combat, and see if I've caught something on mouseover
Both of those features are built into 5.1.0, along with many others.

(Question about stone drop rate)
The drop rates on Rare stones from battles are low. Pet daily quests offer a better rate but still not easy.

We really need a search bar in the mount tab! like with the pets
Yep. We agree.

Can I ask why newbie players are discouraged from playing with battle pets?
We really want players to learn how to play Wow itself before they get overwhelmed by a mini game.

Level 90 Templates Are Now Available!

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

You've been asking for it and I'm pleased to announced that with the latest build of the 5.1.0 PTR: Level 90 Templates Are Now Available.

"Friendly Favor" item is a stackable buff up to 100 stacks. Looks like Blizz intends people to watch and doesn't want everyone to "phase" their own fights.

I'm all for this, so long as Blizzard puts a time limit on the fights! I think it can add some comradery to each faction, cheering for players you otherwise never interact with.

If people really hate having to wait and want to ignore all the other players then maybe they should reconsider what the main idea behind an mmo should be. Having ONE completely optional feature of the game where you wait your turn and are almost forced to not just interact but also support fellow players while you wait sounds awesome to me!

tbh i can see this being a huge problem if they dont add some sort of time limit or phasing. the amount of people who will kite to troll people will be overwhelming not to mention the fact that the deeprun tram is cross realm.

i could see a good fix being have cross realm divide it up whenever theres more then say 20 people in the tram

"Friendly Favor" item is a stackable buff up to 100 stacks. Looks like Blizz intends people to watch and doesn't want everyone to "phase" their own fights.

I'm all for this, so long as Blizzard puts a time limit on the fights! I think it can add some comradery to each faction, cheering for players you otherwise never interact with.

If people really hate having to wait and want to ignore all the other players then maybe they should reconsider what the main idea behind an mmo should be. Having ONE completely optional feature of the game where you wait your turn and are almost forced to not just interact but also support fellow players while you wait sounds awesome to me!

Not sure if its a realm thing, but the one I played on, its far more likely you would have 50 people standing around talking trash the whole fight and about 2 hours worth of nasty whispers insulting everything from your dog to your mother if you lose.

Im a bit tired of phasing tbh, i want to be able to laugh at my friends wiping on this, or just go watch it if im bored. Obviously a solution needs to be sorted on high pop realms, but id rather they keep the spectator thing.

tbh i can see this being a huge problem if they dont add some sort of time limit or phasing. the amount of people who will kite to troll people will be overwhelming not to mention the fact that the deeprun tram is cross realm.

Come on, nobody is going to do that...oh wait, of course someone will in the first 30 minutes this goes live.

I think there has to be more to this than meets the eye (phasing for large realms, time limits/rage timers, mobs that are resistant to CC so they can eventually kill kiters, etc.), so I'm going to give Blizzard the benefit of the doubt. I think we all like to accentuate the negative, but Blizzard does tend to get a lot more right than wrong.

Hmm, as much as I'm looking forward to the Brawlers Guild, this whole 'queue and wait your turn' things is a very very VERY bad idea. If you want to use this system them by all the god make more than one arena, only having one fight at a time will KILL what could otherwise be a very very fun addition to the game.

My idea would be to have multiple fights going on at a time, then have a spectate option, where you can bring up a list of people currently in fights, showing their class, current brawler rank and opponent and you can pick whoever you want to spectate/troll.

Hmm, as much as I'm looking forward to the Brawlers Guild, this whole 'queue and wait your turn' things is a very very VERY bad idea. If you want to use this system them by all the god make more than one arena, only having one fight at a time will KILL what could otherwise be a very very fun addition to the game.

My idea would be to have multiple fights going on at a time, then have a spectate option, where you can bring up a list of people currently in fights, showing their class, current brawler rank and opponent and you can pick whoever you want to spectate/troll.

You could fill the room with several arenas to watch. But even if you make 5 Arenas....I'm sure some guilds will still block them just to piss people off...

I think people are overestimating how many people there are on their server in their own faction. Also the fact that there aren´t really any rewards. The first 3 days this will be a cluster, after that it won´t be too bad. On most servers, after the first week there probably won´t be anyone in there.

I do think the kiting will be an issue though, and I can really see certain groups having ´contests´ to see who can prolong a fight the longest... it will be like a challenge mode heroic in reverse.

Also, I believe there are items that watchers can buy and throw at the contestant. it could be that these are meant to prevent people from kiting a match.. maybe a mvmt debuff or soemthing.